![The former boyfriend of Penny Hill [pictured] has been named as a person of interest more than two decades after her death in Coolah.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/storypad-ukpsdtbFVCHVPwLeMXgLGW/e6dfa971-9f99-41f7-b98c-f8ed210e88a1.jpg/r0_0_794_1122_w576_h298_fmax.webp "The former boyfriend of Penny Hill [pictured] has been named as a person of interest more than two decades after her death in Coolah.")
The mother of a woman killed more than two decades ago in Coolah has appealed for anyone with information about the unsolved case to come forward, as the victim’s boyfriend was named as a person of interest in the case for the first time.
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In October last year, police said they had new leads in the case of Penny Hill, a young woman who was found unconscious and severely bashed on the side of the road at Coolah, in July 1991, several days after starting a job as a nanny at the nearby Black Stump Motel.
She died in a Newcastle hospital two weeks later.
Despite two coronial inquests, the murder of the 20-year-old remains one of the state’s most puzzling unsolved crimes.
In an interview on Channel 7’s Sunday Night program, Detective Sergeant Jason Darcy from the Central West unsolved homicide unit said Ms Hill’s boyfriend, Shane Williams, was a person of interest in the case.
“From our inquiries after the second inquest, we believe there is sufficient information there to warrant him being a person of interest,” Detective Sergeant Darcy said.
“All I can say, whoever it is, whoever has done it, they should come forward and give us a little bit of peace."
Williams had dated Hill for three weeks before she moved to Coolah.
He told the program he was in Armidale on the night Ms Hill was bashed.
In 2013, police examined a blue Datsun in Sydney over the case, which Sunday Night said was the same model of car Mr Williams drove in 1991.
However, Mr Williams told the program there was no way his car was the dark-coloured vehicle, similar to a Commodore, a witness described seeing in the motel’s parking lot on the night Ms Hill was attacked.
“Blind Freddy and his dog could tell the difference between them,” he told reporter Alex Cullen.
“I have no involvement in any way.”
An initial suspect, a chef at the hotel, died in a car accident in late 1991. Another man investigated by police, owner of the motel and former drummer of Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs Col Baigent, has also maintained he is innocent.
In July 2012, the Coroner delivered an open finding in the second inquest into Ms Hill’s death.
That year, the Unsolved Homicide Squad took DNA samples from more than 100 men in Sydney, Coolah and the central west to see if any could be linked to new evidence found in a compartment under the bed in Ms Hill’s motel room, including a business card, a toilet roll, the butt of a rifle and a used condom.
Ms Hill’s mother, Jeanette, said anyone with information about the killing should turn themselves in.
“All I can say, whoever it is, whoever has done it, they should come forward and give us a little bit of peace,” she said.
Police continue to investigate the case. Anyone with further information should contact Crime Stoppers, 1800 333 000.
